Sweetheart Deal by Linda Joffe Hull Read Free Book Online Page A

a peach envelope in my direction.
    â€œThank you,” I mouthed silently as I stepped over and accepted the note.
    â€œ De nada ,” he whispered.
    Suspecting otherwise, I followed him out to the spa lobby, waited for him to head back down the hallway, opened the envelope, and read Alejandro’s response:
    Don’t be afraid.

    I wasn’t exactly afraid, nor was I entirely surprised by Alejandro’s persistence. After all, tip number five on the timeshare handout Geo had given me told viewers to expect them to keep offering deals too good to turn down, 14 to which I was to keep repeating I’m not sure and we’re just not ready. The scenario seemed to apply to both timeshares and forbidden romance.
    Face, however, was terrified.
    Not to mention, terrifying.
    â€œOMG!” she said, opening her eyes to lids and lips that had been colored raspberry to match her bridesmaid’s dress. She began to wave her hands. “ Rojo ? Nada! No!”
    The camera stopped rolling, the makeup lady was led away, and Face launched into a teary OTF 15 about looking like a streetwalker for her sister’s wedding.
    â€œHow bad is it?” a Family Frugalicious staff makeup artist asked, appearing beside me.
    Before I could respond, she’d not only taken a peek and answered her own question, but was rushing in to offer assistance.
    Luckily Face only had to suffer through two teary takes before being restored back to her beautiful self.
    For the next two and a half hours, I was so immersed in shooting segments related to destination wedding prep that I gave little thought to much of anything beyond the “surprise” lunch delivered by Chef Benito, the seamstress who had to be brought in posthaste to repair a torn seam near the zipper of Anastasia’s vintage designer dress, 16 and the teary moment when Anastasia’s parents entered the bride’s room and saw their stunning daughter in her wedding finery. It wasn’t until my own personal 2:30 p.m.: Matron of honor bonding moment with bride that I had time to consider how staged certain moments of the day felt.
    As we hugged and Anastasia thanked me profusely for coming up with the idea of a destination wedding (even though she had) and working so hard to make it so surprisingly affordable (also her doing), I found myself wondering how Alejandro could have known I would be the one to actually find the note he’d put under my pillow in the first place.
    It wasn’t hard for housekeeping to figure out who planned to sleep on which side of the bed—Frank had his prescription on his nightstand and I had placed a tube of hand cream and a magazine with an article about couponing on mine. But how could anyone be sure Frank wouldn’t turn down the covers first? Frank, who’d be obligated to at least threaten to beat the daylights out of anyone who dared to leave such a note for his wife?
    Maybe I was a little more flirtatious than I should have been, and maybe Alejandro was a lot more forward than your run-of - the-mill ladies man, but, somehow, it didn’t seem likely that he could he really be so immediately lovestruck.
    Or stupid …
    Then again, this show was centered on us as a wholesome, frugal family, and this episode in particular was about the blissful, blessed sanctity of marriage. It was one thing for the show’s handlers to mess with a little makeup or even a dress seam to make a point; a secret cheating subplot written in by someone to spice things up didn’t make sense.
    Not demographically, anyway.
    Still, I wasn’t keen on watching an upcoming episode filled with Frankenbites 17 of me looking like I’d fallen victim to Alejandro’s not-at -all uncertain charms while poor born-again -innocent Frank looked on helplessly.
    I grabbed a pen that had been conveniently left on a table outside the salon, scrawled a message of my own on the backside of the note, and headed down the hall before